Measures of Men

At the end of the nineteenth century in Berlin, Alexander Hoffmann is an ambitious doctoral student in ethnology. When a Herero and Nama delegation is brought to the city for a colonial exhibition, he meets them and sees their young interpreter, Kezia Kambazembi, as material for his research. He takes measurements, he measures skulls, and he believes he is giving a racial hierarchy a scientific footing. Then he travels to German South West Africa, to the place where the people he measured are being killed. Lars Kraume's film is among the first major German features to take on the genocide Germany carried out against the Herero and Nama between 1904 and 1908. The skulls in Berlin's museums, the fact that the first concentration camps were built on what is now Namibian soil, and the fact that none of this was taught in schools for generations are the ground the film stands on. Germany formally recognised the killings as genocide in 2021. The film premiered at the Berlinale in 2023.